Wednesday 30th December 2009

Sydney Opera House by Andrew

Our first day in Sydney started with watermelon followed by crumpets – not a bad start (thank you Andrew)! We then got ready and headed for the bus stop near our hotel to catch a bus into the city.

It was a reasonably short journey and the bus went through some lovely streets with rows and rows of tiny little terrace houses (mostly 1 storey)). I later found out that the early settlers built them to be like the rows of terraces in some places in the UK. Apparently it made them feel more at home! (Don’t know who told me that though so it might not be true!)

Two Storey version of the nice houses - by Andrew

It took us about 20 minutes to get down to the Circular Quay from our hotel. First stop for us was the Sydney Opera House. It was SO busy as people were in the city for new years eve and various areas around the opera house were being prepared for the NYE celebrations so photographs were nearly impossible!

Fisheye down at Circular Quay - by Andrew

I did sit down and have one of those ‘WOW’ moments, the Opera House is very different and something you don’t really appreciate until you are there and you see the intricate detail of the roof. My sit down also gave me the chance to do some people watching, funny what you see when you stop for a moment and let the world go by…

The Perfect Photographers Stance - By T

After the Opera House Andrew and I decided to go see different things (he’ll have to write his part up himself!). I got on a ferry from Circular Quay to Darling Harbour (and return). I love being out on the water, you see so much more and notice lots of things you may have missed on land. The Opera House looked even better from the water and seeing the Harbour Bridge up close is pretty cool.

Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House from Luna Park - by T

Sydney Harbour Bridge from The Rocks - by Andrew

The boat took us down to Darling Harbour where we got a great view of the city skyline with the Sky tower dominating the scene. I’m going to give the tower a go tomorrow morning, hopefully it wont be too busy as most people will be queueing for places for the evening!

Sydney Skyline- by T

Following the boat trip I was a bit tired so headed back to the hotel and when Andrew returned we headed out in search of food.

Probably the only bad thing about the area our hotel was in is that they have a map with restaurants on it but most of them aren’t where they say there are! In the end we settled for a small Thai restaurant and set our mouthes on fire with a Thai curry!

Early night tonight as tomorrow is going to be a very big day!

View from the boat - by T

You can read a review of our Sydney hotel here.

All photos will be uploaded to our flickr gallery soon, in the meantime please feel free to leave comments here

Monday 28th and Tuesday 29th December 2009 – Heathrow and in the skies between UK, Singapore and Sydney

Woohoo! Today’s the day! After years of planning we are finally heading off on our trip of a lifetime! The alarm went off at 6.30am and we made it down for breakfast at 7am – not bad seeing as we had to be packed and ready to go straight after we had eaten! 7.39am the airport hoppa picked us up and we headed for terminal 3. Check-in was reasonably simple as we had already checked in online. Thankfully our bags weren’t too heavy – sometimes you can’t tell!

I wasn’t looking forward to the next 24 hours at all.

Security wasn’t too bad this time round, I think they only searched me twice which was better than the trip to the USA and quite good considering we had extra security in place following the failed Christmas Day ‘attack’.

We boarded at 10.20am and I felt much better once I saw we had the seats that Qantas had (finally) offered me. Next stop for me was the bathroom for my clexane (blood thinner) injection. It was a little off putting having to watch yourself in the mirror of the toilet on the plane, Andrew being scared of needles was a pain but the injection was surprisingly painless

We were quite pleased to be flying on the new Airbus A380-800. It was a lovely plane with plenty of space and the most comfortable seats of any plane I have ever sat in! (visit our review section for more of a write up on the Airbus).

A peek into First Class!

Plenty of legroom

Packed in!

 

Our Plane (we're inside!) from the Airbus A380's tail camera!

11 hours later we stopped in Singapore to refuel (bit of a farce getting off and almost straight back on the plane but suppose it’s for our safety during refuelling as much as anything.

22 hours after we left the UK we got our first glimpse of Sydney as our plane came in to land…

View over Sydney from the Airbus A380

All images taken on our ickle point and shoot camera

Back to reality!

Yup, we’re home! The last 5 weeks have flown by, neither of us can believe how much we have seen and done…and how it feels like just yesterday we headed off on our travels!

Diary posts will be appearing here over the next few days along with photos so, watch this space!

Sunset over Storm Bay

Well, it’s currently 10.45pm here, we travelled from Christchurch to Picton earlier today, via Kaikora where we managed to see a few seals and then from Picton to Wellington on the Interislander ferry.

Shortly before we arrived in Wellington we got to see a lovely sunset over Storm Bay…

Sunset over Storm Bay, New Zealand

Sadly we dont seem to be getting much time to just sit back and relax so we’ve decided to complete our diary when we get back to the UK. We have around 20 days written up so far but no photos edited so we will do our best to get a day posted each day when we get back!

More soon

Were just sitting watching the world go by here…

View from our room at Milford Sound Lodge

We arrived here at Milford Sound (lower north west of the South Island in New Zealand) a few hours ago and have had trouble tearing ourselves away from the view!

The drive here from Te Anau was pretty fantastic too and instead of beautiful blue skies and sunshine we actually got the moody skies which suit this location so well

No time to post diary entries, we are just too busy! However, here’s a photo of us from 2 days ago taken at Franz Josef with the glacier in the background …

T and A at Franz Josef (16th January 2010)

We’re making our way back up to Picton over the next few days and then heading to meet some special friends on the North island…so we may or may not post more photos soon lol

Quick Message from Noosa

G’day

Well, we still havent managed to get enough time to write one diary post, but, I will do my best to try and get something with photos posted here around the 14th during our flight to New Zealand!

Driving is mostly done for this part of the trip – which Andrew is quite pleased about – and tomorrow we will be visiting G here in Noosa and Shez and Pete in Caloundra We are really looking forward to seeing them and spending some time with them over the next few days

Now it’s time for bed as we have another fairly early start tomorrow…we will get a lie in soon!

T and Andrew

Quick post!

Hi All,

Don’t worry, we’re still here Apologies for not posting more often but we’re making sure we pack in as much as possible whislt we are here and that’s leaving us both shattered by about 8pm each night lol

We are currently sitting in Airlie Beach, gateway to the Whitsundays, and it is beautiful! Our hotel overlooks the harbour and both of us can’t believe just how lovely the water here is…you see it in photos but we all know what you can do in photoshop these days!

So far we’ve been to Sydney, Cairns, Ingham (don’t bother going there! long storry which we’ll post at a later date!), Townsville and now Airlie Beach. Next stop is still undecided! We can’t make our minds up but the day after tomorrow is Rockhampton…we know that for certain!

Better go for now, too much to see and not enough time!

Really looking forward to meeting Shez, Pete, Karin, Cory, Rina, Laurie and everyone else at the various GTG’s we have arranged over the next few weeks!

See you all soon!!!

Natalya and Andrew

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Sydney NYE 2009 – by T (Straight out of the camera (no editing))

Last night in Sydney was probably one of the most amazing things I have ever experienced!

There really are no words to describe just how awesome walking down the red carpet (yup, there really was one!) at the venue we had tickets for was, just seeing the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge right there in front of usand so close…I won’t ever forget that moment!

Taken lots of photos and videod the whole fireworks and we hope to get them here for you as soon as we can.

After the event we had to walk for around an hour (at my slow pace) to our bus stop then we had 4 hours sleep before having to get up and get to the airport for our flight to Cairns this morning!

Just back from dinner in Cairns and trying to get our room a little cooler before settling down for the evening…it’s a tad warm here right now! When I say tad, imagine me in shorts and t-shirt with sweat pouring down my face/back/and even my legs and you’ll get something pretty close to exactly how I am right now! However, it’s not actually as bad as I was expecting…thank goodness!

Anyway, off to make the bedroom cooler…a more thorough update will follow in the next couple of days!

Day 3 – We’ve arrived!

Well, we made it! The second leg from Singapore to Sydney just flew by and I’m happy to report, after a good nights sleep, neither one of us has jetlag!

It’s 5.40pm and we are back in our apartment for a rest. We took the bus to Circular Quay and then wandered down to the opera house first this morning, it was soooo busy! Plus, someone decided to ruin any decent photos by erecting allsorts of stuff for the NYE events tomorrow! Still, it was a cool thing to see and hopefully one of us has a decent picture or two from there

After the opera house Andrew and I went our seperate ways and I boarded a boat to Darling Harbour, didnt actually intend to get off, I just wanted to relax a bit, watch the world go by and take the odd photo!

Not sure where Andrew got to as he’d only just got back, am sure he’ll update here later

We’ve got a few bits and pieces to eat in for dinner then we’re off back into the city for some early evening/night photos (hopefully)

More from us soon

P.S Checkout the cool view through the camera on the Airbus A380…

We are inside that plane!!

Day 2 – Andrew’s First Post!

09:30 – Terminal 3 at Heathrow. Myself, T and Woodies  are through the security checks and waiting to be called for our flight to Sydney (via Singapore).

T has a syringe in her hand and is about to puncture herself. I guess if you show the security guards your deadly weapon they are happy to let you on the plane with them?

Off to get my stockings (ooeer) then head toward the departure gate – next stop Singapore